Far out in the ocean the water is as blue as the
petals of the loveliest cornflower, and as clear as the purest
glass. But it is very deep too. It goes down deeper than any
anchor rope will go, and many, many steeples would have to be
stacked one on top of another to reach from the bottom to the
surface of the sea. It is down there that the sea folk live.

Now don't suppose that there are only bare white
sands at the bottom of the sea. No indeed! The most marvelous
trees and flowers grow down there, with such pliant stalks and
leaves that the least stir in the water makes them move about as
though they were alive. All sorts of fish, large and small, dart
among the branches, just as birds flit through the trees up here.
From the deepest spot in the ocean rises the palace of the sea
king. Its walls are made of coral and its high pointed windows of
the clearest amber, but the roof is made of mussel shells that
open and shut with the tide. This is a wonderful sight to see,
for every shell holds glistening pearls, any one of which would
be the pride of a queen's crown.

The sea king down there had been a widower for
years, and his old mother kept house for him. She was a clever
woman, but very proud of her noble birth. Therefore she flaunted
twelve oysters on her tail while the other ladies of the court
were only allowed to wear six. Except for this she was an
altogether praiseworthy person, particularly so because she was
extremely fond of her granddaughters, the little sea princesses.
They were six lovely girls, but the youngest was the most
beautiful of them all. Her skin was as soft and tender as a rose
petal, and her eyes were as blue as the deep sea, but like all
the others she had no feet. Her body ended in a fish tail.

The whole day long they used to play in the
palace, down in the great halls where live flowers grew on the
walls. Whenever the high amber windows were thrown open the fish
would swim in, just as swallows dart into our rooms when we open
the windows. But these fish, now, would swim right up to the
little princesses to eat out of their hands and let themselves be
petted.

Outside the palace was a big garden, with flaming
red and deep-blue trees. Their fruit glittered like gold, and
their blossoms flamed like fire on their constantly waving
stalks. The soil was very fine sand indeed, but as blue as
burning brimstone. A strange blue veil lay over everything down
there. You would have thought yourself aloft in the air with only
the blue sky above and beneath you, rather than down at the
bottom of the sea. When there was a dead calm, you could just see
the sun, like a scarlet flower with light streaming from its
calyx.

Each little princess had her own small garden
plot, where she could dig and plant whatever she liked. One of
them made her little flower bed in the shape of a whale, another
thought it neater to shape hers like a little mermaid, but the
youngest of them made hers as round as the sun, and there she
grew only flowers which were as red as the sun itself. She was an
unusual child, quiet and wistful, and when her sisters decorated
their gardens with all kinds of odd things they had found in
sunken ships, she would allow nothing in hers except flowers as
red as the sun, and a pretty marble statue. This figure of a
handsome boy, carved in pure white marble, had sunk down to the
bottom of the sea from some ship that was wrecked. Beside the
statue she planted a rose-colored weeping willow tree, which
thrived so well that its graceful branches shaded the statue and
hung down to the blue sand, where their shadows took on a violet
tint, and swayed as the branches swayed. It looked as if the
roots and the tips of the branches were kissing each other in
play.

Nothing gave the youngest princess such pleasure
as to hear about the world of human beings up above them. Her old
grandmother had to tell her all she knew about ships and cities,
and of people and animals. What seemed nicest of all to her was
that up on land the flowers were fragrant, for those at the
bottom of the sea had no scent. And she thought it was nice that
the woods were green, and that the fish you saw among their
branches could sing so loud and sweet that it was delightful to
hear them. Her grandmother had to call the little birds "fish,"
or the princess would not have known what she was talking about,
for she had never seen a bird.

"When you get to be fifteen," her grandmother
said, "you will be allowed to rise up out of the ocean and sit on
the rocks in the moonlight, to watch the great ships sailing by.
You will see woods and towns, too."

Next year one of her sisters would be fifteen, but
the others - well, since each was a whole year older than the
next the youngest still had five long years to wait until she
could rise up from the water and see what our world was like. But
each sister promised to tell the others about all that she saw,
and what she found most marvelous on her first day. Their
grandmother had not told them half enough, and there were so many
thing that they longed to know about.

The most eager of them all was the youngest, the
very one who was so quiet and wistful. Many a night she stood by
her open window and looked up through the dark blue water where
the fish waved their fins and tails. She could just see the moon
and stars. To be sure, their light was quite dim, but looked at
through the water they seemed much bigger than they appear to us.
Whenever a cloud-like shadow swept across them, she knew that it
was either a whale swimming overhead, or a ship with many human
beings aboard it. Little did they dream that a pretty young
mermaid was down below, stretching her white arms up toward the
keel of their ship.

The eldest princess had her fifteenth birthday, so
now she received permission to rise up out of the water. When she
got back she had a hundred things to tell her sisters about, but
the most marvelous thing of all, she said, was to lie on a sand
bar in the moonlight, when the sea was calm, and to gaze at the
large city on the shore, where the lights twinkled like hundreds
of stars; to listen to music; to hear the chatter and clamor of
carriages and people; to see so many church towers and spires;
and to hear the ringing bells. Because she could not enter the
city, that was just what she most dearly longed to do.

Oh, how intently the youngest sister listened.
After this, whenever she stood at her open window at night and
looked up through the dark blue waters, she thought of that great
city with all of its clatter and clamor, and even fancied that in
these depths she could hear the church bells ring.

The next year, her second sister had permission to
rise up to the surface and swim wherever she pleased. She came up
just at sunset, and she said that this spectacle was the most
marvelous sight she had ever seen. The heavens had a golden glow,
and as for the clouds - she could not find words to describe
their beauty. Splashed with red and tinted with violet, they
sailed over her head. But much faster than the sailing clouds
were wild swans in a flock. Like a long white veil trailing above
the sea, they flew toward the setting sun. She too swam toward
it, but down it went, and all the rose-colored glow faded from
the sea and sky.

The following year, her third sister ascended, and
as she was the boldest of them all she swam up a broad river that
flowed into the ocean. She saw gloriously green, vine-colored
hills. Palaces and manor houses could be glimpsed through the
splendid woods. She heard all the birds sing, and the sun shone
so brightly that often she had to dive under the water to cool
her burning face. In a small cove she found a whole school of
mortal children, paddling about in the water quite naked. She
wanted to play with them, but they took fright and ran away. Then
along came a little black animal - it was a dog, but she had
never seen a dog before. It barked at her so ferociously that she
took fright herself, and fled to the open sea. But never could
she forget the splendid woods, the green hills, and the nice
children who could swim in the water although they didn't wear
fish tails.

The fourth sister was not so venturesome. She
stayed far out among the rough waves, which she said was a
marvelous place. You could see all around you for miles and
miles, and the heavens up above you were like a vast dome of
glass. She had seen ships, but they were so far away that they
looked like sea gulls. Playful dolphins had turned somersaults,
and monstrous whales had spouted water through their nostrils so
that it looked as if hundreds of fountains were playing all
around them.

Now the fifth sister had her turn. Her birthday
came in the wintertime, so she saw things that none of the others
had seen. The sea was a deep green color, and enormous icebergs
drifted about. Each one glistened like a pearl, she said, but
they were more lofty than any church steeple built by man. They
assumed the most fantastic shapes, and sparkled like diamonds.
She had seated herself on the largest one, and all the ships that
came sailing by sped away as soon as the frightened sailors saw
her there with her long hair blowing in the wind.

In the late evening clouds filled the sky. Thunder
cracked and lightning darted across the heavens. Black waves
lifted those great bergs of ice on high, where they flashed when
the lightning struck.

On all the ships the sails were reefed and there
was fear and trembling. But quietly she sat there, upon her
drifting iceberg, and watched the blue forked lightning strike
the sea.

Each of the sisters took delight in the lovely new
sights when she first rose up to the surface of the sea. But when
they became grown-up girls, who were allowed to go wherever they
liked, they became indifferent to it. They would become homesick,
and in a month they said that there was no place like the bottom
of the sea, where they felt so completely at home.

On many an evening the older sisters would rise to
the surface, arm in arm, all five in a row. They had beautiful
voices, more charming than those of any mortal beings. When a
storm was brewing, and they anticipated a shipwreck, they would
swim before the ship and sing most seductively of how beautiful
it was at the bottom of the ocean, trying to overcome the
prejudice that the sailors had against coming down to them. But
people could not understand their song, and mistook it for the
voice of the storm. Nor was it for them to see the glories of the
deep. When their ship went down they were drowned, and it was as
dead men that they reached the sea king's palace.

On the evenings when the mermaids rose through the
water like this, arm in arm, their youngest sister stayed behind
all alone, looking after them and wanting to weep. But a mermaid
has no tears, and therefore she suffers so much more.

"Oh, how I do wish I were fifteen!" she said. "I
know I shall love that world up there and all the people who live
in it."

And at last she too came to be fifteen.

"Now I'll have you off my hands," said her
grandmother, the old queen dowager. "Come, let me adorn you like
your sisters." In the little maid's hair she put a wreath of
white lilies, each petal of which was formed from half of a
pearl. And the old queen let eight big oysters fasten themselves
to the princess's tail, as a sign of her high rank.

"But that hurts!" said the little mermaid.

"You must put up with a good deal to keep up
appearances," her grandmother told her.

Oh, how gladly she would have shaken off all these
decorations, and laid aside the cumbersome wreath! The red
flowers in her garden were much more becoming to her, but she
didn't dare to make any changes. "Good-by," she said, and up she
went through the water, as light and as sparkling as a
bubble.

The sun had just gone down when her head rose
above the surface, but the clouds still shone like gold and
roses, and in the delicately tinted sky sparkled the clear gleam
of the evening star. The air was mild and fresh and the sea
unruffled. A great three-master lay in view with only one of all
its sails set, for there was not even the whisper of a breeze,
and the sailors idled about in the rigging and on the yards.
There was music and singing on the ship, and as night came on
they lighted hundreds of such brightly colored lanterns that one
might have thought the flags of all nations were swinging in the
air.

The little mermaid swam right up to the window of
the main cabin, and each time she rose with the swell she could
peep in through the clear glass panes at the crowd of brilliantly
dressed people within. The handsomest of them all was a young
Prince with big dark eyes. He could not be more than sixteen
years old. It was his birthday and that was the reason for all
the celebration. Up on deck the sailors were dancing, and when
the Prince appeared among them a hundred or more rockets flew
through the air, making it as bright as day. These startled the
little mermaid so badly that she ducked under the water. But she
soon peeped up again, and then it seemed as if all the stars in
the sky were falling around her. Never had she seen such
fireworks. Great suns spun around, splendid fire-fish floated
through the blue air, and all these things were mirrored in the
crystal clear sea. It was so brilliantly bright that you could
see every little rope of the ship, and the people could be seen
distinctly. Oh, how handsome the young Prince was! He laughed,
and he smiled and shook people by the hand, while the music rang
out in the perfect evening.

It got very late, but the little mermaid could not
take her eyes off the ship and the handsome Prince. The brightly
colored lanterns were put out, no more rockets flew through the
air, and no more cannon boomed. But there was a mutter and rumble
deep down in the sea, and the swell kept bouncing her up so high
that she could look into the cabin.

Now the ship began to sail. Canvas after canvas
was spread in the wind, the waves rose high, great clouds
gathered, and lightning flashed in the distance. Ah, they were in
for a terrible storm, and the mariners made haste to reef the
sails. The tall ship pitched and rolled as it sped through the
angry sea. The waves rose up like towering black mountains, as if
they would break over the masthead, but the swan-like ship
plunged into the valleys between such waves, and emerged to ride
their lofty heights. To the little mermaid this seemed good
sport, but to the sailors it was nothing of the sort. The ship
creaked and labored, thick timbers gave way under the heavy
blows, waves broke over the ship, the mainmast snapped in two
like a reed, the ship listed over on its side, and water burst
into the hold.

Now the little mermaid saw that people were in
peril, and that she herself must take care to avoid the beams and
wreckage tossed about by the sea. One moment it would be black as
pitch, and she couldn't see a thing. Next moment the lightning
would flash so brightly that she could distinguish every soul on
board. Everyone was looking out for himself as best he could. She
watched closely for the young Prince, and when the ship split in
two she saw him sink down in the sea. At first she was overjoyed
that he would be with her, but then she recalled that human
people could not live under the water, and he could only visit
her father's palace as a dead man. No, he should not die! So she
swam in among all the floating planks and beams, completely
forgetting that they might crush her. She dived through the waves
and rode their crests, until at length she reached the young
Prince, who was no longer able to swim in that raging sea. His
arms and legs were exhausted, his beautiful eyes were closing,
and he would have died if the little mermaid had not come to help
him. She held his head above water, and let the waves take them
wherever the waves went.

At daybreak, when the storm was over, not a trace
of the ship was in view. The sun rose out of the waters, red and
bright, and its beams seemed to bring the glow of life back to
the cheeks of the Prince, but his eyes remained closed. The
mermaid kissed his high and shapely forehead. As she stroked his
wet hair in place, it seemed to her that he looked like that
marble statue in her little garden. She kissed him again and
hoped that he would live.

She saw dry land rise before her in high blue
mountains, topped with snow as glistening white as if a flock of
swans were resting there. Down by the shore were splendid green
woods, and in the foreground stood a church, or perhaps a
convent; she didn't know which, but anyway it was a building.
Orange and lemon trees grew in its garden, and tall palm trees
grew beside the gateway. Here the sea formed a little harbor,
quite calm and very deep. Fine white sand had been washed up
below the cliffs. She swam there with the handsome Prince, and
stretched him out on the sand, taking special care to pillow his
head up high in the warm sunlight.

The bells began to ring in the great white
building, and a number of young girls came out into the garden.
The little mermaid swam away behind some tall rocks that stuck
out of the water. She covered her hair and her shoulders with
foam so that no one could see her tiny face, and then she watched
to see who would find the poor Prince.

In a little while one of the young girls came upon
him. She seemed frightened, but only for a minute; then she
called more people. The mermaid watched the Prince regain
consciousness, and smile at everyone around him. But he did not
smile at her, for he did not even know that she had saved him.
She felt very unhappy, and when they led him away to the big
building she dived sadly down into the water and returned to her
father's palace.

She had always been quiet and wistful, and now she
became much more so. Her sisters asked her what she had seen on
her first visit up to the surface, but she would not tell them a
thing.

Many evenings and many mornings she revisited the
spot where she had left the Prince. She saw the fruit in the
garden ripened and harvested, and she saw the snow on the high
mountain melted away, but she did not see the Prince, so each
time she came home sadder than she had left. It was her one
consolation to sit in her little garden and throw her arms about
the beautiful marble statue that looked so much like the Prince.
But she took no care of her flowers now. They overgrew the paths
until the place was a wilderness, and their long stalks and
leaves became so entangled in the branches of the tree that it
cast a gloomy shade.

Finally she couldn't bear it any longer. She told
her secret to one of her sisters. Immediately all the other
sisters heard about it. No one else knew, except a few more
mermaids who told no one - except their most intimate friends.
One of these friends knew who the Prince was. She too had seen
the birthday celebration on the ship. She knew where he came from
and where his kingdom was.

"Come, little sister!" said the other princesses.
Arm in arm, they rose from the water in a long row, right in
front of where they knew the Prince's palace stood. It was built
of pale, glistening, golden stone with great marble staircases,
one of which led down to the sea. Magnificent gilt domes rose
above the roof, and between the pillars all around the building
were marble statues that looked most lifelike. Through the clear
glass of the lofty windows one could see into the splendid halls,
with their costly silk hangings and tapestries, and walls covered
with paintings that were delightful to behold. In the center of
the main hall a large fountain played its columns of spray up to
the glass-domed roof, through which the sun shone down on the
water and upon the lovely plants that grew in the big basin.

Now that she knew where he lived, many an evening
and many a night she spent there in the sea. She swam much closer
to shore than any of her sisters would dare venture, and she even
went far up a narrow stream, under the splendid marble balcony
that cast its long shadow in the water. Here she used to sit and
watch the young Prince when he thought himself quite alone in the
bright moonlight.

On many evenings she saw him sail out in his fine
boat, with music playing and flags a-flutter. She would peep out
through the green rushes, and if the wind blew her long silver
veil, anyone who saw it mistook it for a swan spreading its
wings.

On many nights she saw the fishermen come out to
sea with their torches, and heard them tell about how kind the
young Prince was. This made her proud to think that it was she
who had saved his life when he was buffeted about, half dead
among the waves. And she thought of how softly his head had
rested on her breast, and how tenderly she had kissed him, though
he knew nothing of all this nor could he even dream of it.

Increasingly she grew to like human beings, and
more and more she longed to live among them. Their world seemed
so much wider than her own, for they could skim over the sea in
ships, and mount up into the lofty peaks high over the clouds,
and their lands stretched out in woods and fields farther than
the eye could see. There was so much she wanted to know. Her
sisters could not answer all her questions, so she asked her old
grandmother, who knew about the "upper world," which was what she
said was the right name for the countries above the sea.

"If men aren't drowned," the little mermaid asked,
"do they live on forever? Don't they die, as we do down here in
the sea?"

"Yes," the old lady said, "they too must die, and
their lifetimes are even shorter than ours. We can live to be
three hundred years old, but when we perish we turn into mere
foam on the sea, and haven't even a grave down here among our
dear ones. We have no immortal soul, no life hereafter. We are
like the green seaweed - once cut down, it never grows again.
Human beings, on the contrary, have a soul which lives forever,
long after their bodies have turned to clay. It rises through
thin air, up to the shining stars. Just as we rise through the
water to see the lands on earth, so men rise up to beautiful
places unknown, which we shall never see."

"Why weren't we given an immortal soul?" the
little mermaid sadly asked. "I would gladly give up my three
hundred years if I could be a human being only for a day, and
later share in that heavenly realm."

"You must not think about that," said the old
lady. "We fare much more happily and are much better off than the
folk up there."

"Then I must also die and float as foam upon the
sea, not hearing the music of the waves, and seeing neither the
beautiful flowers nor the red sun! Can't I do anything at all to
win an immortal soul?"

"No," her grandmother answered, "not unless a
human being loved you so much that you meant more to him than his
father and mother. If his every thought and his whole heart
cleaved to you so that he would let a priest join his right hand
to yours and would promise to be faithful here and throughout all
eternity, then his soul would dwell in your body, and you would
share in the happiness of mankind. He would give you a soul and
yet keep his own. But that can never come to pass. The very thing
that is your greatest beauty here in the sea - your fish tail -
would be considered ugly on land. They have such poor taste that
to be thought beautiful there you have to have two awkward props
which they call legs."

The little mermaid sighed and looked unhappily at
her fish tail.

"Come, let us be gay!" the old lady said. "Let us
leap and bound throughout the three hundred years that we have to
live. Surely that is time and to spare, and afterwards we shall
be glad enough to rest in our graves. - We are holding a court
ball this evening."

This was a much more glorious affair than is ever
to be seen on earth. The walls and the ceiling of the great
ballroom were made of massive but transparent glass. Many
hundreds of huge rose-red and grass-green shells stood on each
side in rows, with the blue flames that burned in each shell
illuminating the whole room and shining through the walls so
clearly that it was quite bright in the sea outside. You could
see the countless fish, great and small, swimming toward the
glass walls. On some of them the scales gleamed purplish-red,
while others were silver and gold. Across the floor of the hall
ran a wide stream of water, and upon this the mermaids and mermen
danced to their own entrancing songs. Such beautiful voices are
not to be heard among the people who live on land. The little
mermaid sang more sweetly than anyone else, and everyone
applauded her. For a moment her heart was happy, because she knew
she had the loveliest voice of all, in the sea or on the land.
But her thoughts soon strayed to the world up above. She could
not forget the charming Prince, nor her sorrow that she did not
have an immortal soul like his. Therefore she stole out of her
father's palace and, while everything there was song and
gladness, she sat sadly in her own little garden.

Then she heard a bugle call through the water, and
she thought, "That must mean he is sailing up there, he whom I
love more than my father or mother, he of whom I am always
thinking, and in whose hands I would so willingly trust my
lifelong happiness. I dare do anything to win him and to gain an
immortal soul. While my sisters are dancing here, in my father's
palace, I shall visit the sea witch of whom I have always been so
afraid. Perhaps she will be able to advise me and help me."

The little mermaid set out from her garden toward
the whirlpools that raged in front of the witch's dwelling. She
had never gone that way before. No flowers grew there, nor any
seaweed. Bare and gray, the sands extended to the whirlpools,
where like roaring mill wheels the waters whirled and snatched
everything within their reach down to the bottom of the sea.
Between these tumultuous whirlpools she had to thread her way to
reach the witch's waters, and then for a long stretch the only
trail lay through a hot seething mire, which the witch called her
peat marsh. Beyond it her house lay in the middle of a weird
forest, where all the trees and shrubs were polyps, half animal
and half plant. They looked like hundred-headed snakes growing
out of the soil. All their branches were long, slimy arms, with
fingers like wriggling worms. They squirmed, joint by joint, from
their roots to their outermost tentacles, and whatever they could
lay hold of they twined around and never let go. The little
mermaid was terrified, and stopped at the edge of the forest. Her
heart thumped with fear and she nearly turned back, but then she
remembered the Prince and the souls that men have, and she
summoned her courage. She bound her long flowing locks closely
about her head so that the polyps could not catch hold of them,
folded her arms across her breast, and darted through the water
like a fish, in among the slimy polyps that stretched out their
writhing arms and fingers to seize her. She saw that every one of
them held something that it had caught with its hundreds of
little tentacles, and to which it clung as with strong hoops of
steel. The white bones of men who had perished at sea and sunk to
these depths could be seen in the polyps' arms. Ships' rudders,
and seamen's chests, and the skeletons of land animals had also
fallen into their clutches, but the most ghastly sight of all was
a little mermaid whom they had caught and strangled.

She reached a large muddy clearing in the forest,
where big fat water snakes slithered about, showing their foul
yellowish bellies. In the middle of this clearing was a house
built of the bones of shipwrecked men, and there sat the sea
witch, letting a toad eat out of her mouth just as we might feed
sugar to a little canary bird. She called the ugly fat water
snakes her little chickabiddies, and let them crawl and sprawl
about on her spongy bosom.

"I know exactly what you want," said the sea
witch. "It is very foolish of you, but just the same you shall
have your way, for it will bring you to grief, my proud princess.
You want to get rid of your fish tail and have two props instead,
so that you can walk about like a human creature, and have the
young Prince fall in love with you, and win him and an immortal
soul besides." At this, the witch gave such a loud cackling laugh
that the toad and the snakes were shaken to the ground, where
they lay writhing.

"You are just in time," said the witch. "After the
sun comes up tomorrow, a whole year would have to go by before I
could be of any help to you. J shall compound you a draught, and
before sunrise you must swim to the shore with it, seat yourself
on dry land, and drink the draught down. Then your tail will
divide and shrink until it becomes what the people on earth call
a pair of shapely legs. But it will hurt; it will feel as if a
sharp sword slashed through you. Everyone who sees you will say
that you are the most graceful human being they have ever laid
eyes on, for you will keep your gliding movement and no dancer
will be able to tread as lightly as you. But every step you take
will feel as if you were treading upon knife blades so sharp that
blood must flow. I am willing to help you, but are you willing to
suffer all this?"

"Yes," the little mermaid said in a trembling
voice, as she thought of the Prince and of gaining a human
soul.

"Remember!" said the witch. "Once you have taken a
human form, you can never be a mermaid again. You can never come
back through the waters to your sisters, or to your father's
palace. And if you do not win the love of the Prince so
completely that for your sake he forgets his father and mother,
cleaves to you with his every thought and his whole heart, and
lets the priest join your hands in marriage, then you will win no
immortal soul. If he marries someone else, your heart will break
on the very next morning, and you will become foam of the
sea."

"I shall take that risk," said the little mermaid,
but she turned as pale as death.

"Also, you will have to pay me," said the witch,
"and it is no trifling price that I'm asking. You have the
sweetest voice of anyone down here at the bottom of the sea, and
while I don't doubt that you would like to captivate the Prince
with it, you must give this voice to me. I will take the very
best thing that you have, in return for my sovereign draught. I
must pour my own blood in it to make the drink as sharp as a
two-edged sword."

"But if you take my voice," said the little
mermaid, "what will be left to me?"

"Your lovely form," the witch told her, "your
gliding movements, and your eloquent eyes. With these you can
easily enchant a human heart. Well, have you lost your courage?
Stick out your little tongue and I shall cut it off. I'll have my
price, and you shall have the potent draught."

"Go ahead," said the little mermaid.

The witch hung her caldron over the flames, to
brew the draught. "Cleanliness is a good thing," she said, as she
tied her snakes in a knot and scoured out the pot with them. Then
she pricked herself in the chest and let her black blood splash
into the caldron. Steam swirled up from it, in such ghastly
shapes that anyone would have been terrified by them. The witch
constantly threw new ingredients into the caldron, and it started
to boil with a sound like that of a crocodile shedding tears.
When the draught was ready at last, it looked as clear as the
purest water.

"There's your draught," said the witch. And
she cut off the tongue of the little mermaid, who now was dumb
and could neither sing nor talk.

"If the polyps should pounce on you when you walk
back through my wood," the witch said, "just spill a drop of this
brew upon them and their tentacles will break in a thousand
pieces." But there was no need of that, for the polyps curled up
in terror as soon as they saw the bright draught. It glittered in
the little mermaid's hand as if it were a shining star. So she
soon traversed the forest, the marsh, and the place of raging
whirlpools.

She could see her father's palace. The lights had
been snuffed out in the great ballroom, and doubtless everyone in
the palace was asleep, but she dared not go near them, now that
she was stricken dumb and was leaving her home forever. Her heart
felt as if it would break with grief. She tip-toed into the
garden, took one flower from each of her sisters' little plots,
blew a thousand kisses toward the palace, and then mounted up
through the dark blue sea.

The sun had not yet risen when she saw the
Prince's palace. As she climbed his splendid marble staircase,
the moon was shining clear. The little mermaid swallowed the
bitter, fiery draught, and it was as if a two-edged sword struck
through her frail body. She swooned away, and lay there as if she
were dead. When the sun rose over the sea she awoke and felt a
flash of pain, but directly in front of her stood the handsome
young Prince, gazing at her with his coal-black eyes. Lowering
her gaze, she saw that her fish tail was gone, and that she had
the loveliest pair of white legs any young maid could hope to
have. But she was naked, so she clothed herself in her own long
hair.

The Prince asked who she was, and how she came to
be there. Her deep blue eyes looked at him tenderly but very
sadly, for she could not speak. Then he took her hand and led her
into his palace. Every footstep felt as if she were walking on
the blades and points of sharp knives, just as the witch had
foretold, but she gladly endured it. She moved as lightly as a
bubble as she walked beside the Prince. He and all who saw her
marveled at the grace of her gliding walk.

Once clad in the rich silk and muslin garments
that were provided for her, she was the loveliest person in all
the palace, though she was dumb and could neither sing nor speak.
Beautiful slaves, attired in silk and cloth of gold, came to sing
before the Prince and his royal parents. One of them sang more
sweetly than all the others, and when the Prince smiled at her
and clapped his hands, the little mermaid felt very unhappy, for
she knew that she herself used to sing much more sweetly.

"Oh," she thought, "if he only knew that I parted
with my voice forever so that I could be near him."

Graceful slaves now began to dance to the most
wonderful music. Then the little mermaid lifted her shapely white
arms, rose up on the tips of her toes, and skimmed over the
floor. No one had ever danced so well. Each movement set off her
beauty to better and better advantage, and her eyes spoke more
directly to the heart than any of the singing slaves could
do.

She charmed everyone, and especially the Prince,
who called her his dear little foundling. She danced time and
again, though every time she touched the floor she felt as if she
were treading on sharp-edged steel. The Prince said he would keep
her with him always, and that she was to have a velvet pillow to
sleep on outside his door.

He had a page's suit made for her, so that she
could go with him on horseback. They would ride through the sweet
scented woods, where the green boughs brushed her shoulders, and
where the little birds sang among the fluttering leaves.

She climbed up high mountains with the Prince, and
though her tender feet bled so that all could see it, she only
laughed and followed him on until they could see the clouds
driving far below, like a flock of birds in flight to distant
lands.

At home in the Prince's palace, while the others
slept at night, she would go down the broad marble steps to cool
her burning feet in the cold sea water, and then she would recall
those who lived beneath the sea. One night her sisters came by,
arm in arm, singing sadly as they breasted the waves. When she
held out her hands toward them, they knew who she was, and told
her how unhappy she had made them all. They came to see her every
night after that, and once far, far out to sea, she saw her old
grandmother, who had not been up to the surface this many a year.
With her was the sea king, with his crown upon his head. They
stretched out their hands to her, but they did not venture so
near the land as her sisters had.

Day after day she became more dear to the Prince,
who loved her as one would love a good little child, but he never
thought of making her his Queen. Yet she had to be his wife or
she would never have an immortal soul, and on the morning after
his wedding she would turn into foam on the waves.

"Don't you love me best of all?" the little
mermaid's eyes seemed to question him, when he took her in his
arms and kissed her lovely forehead.

"Yes, you are most dear to me," said the Prince,
"for you have the kindest heart. You love me more than anyone
else does, and you look so much like a young girl I once saw but
never shall find again. I was on a ship that was wrecked, and the
waves cast me ashore near a holy temple, where many young girls
performed the rituals. The youngest of them found me beside the
sea and saved my life. Though I saw her no more than twice, she
is the only person in all the world whom I could love. But you
are so much like her that you almost replace the memory of her in
my heart. She belongs to that holy temple, therefore it is my
good fortune that I have you. We shall never part."

"Alas, he doesn't know it was I who saved his
life," the little mermaid thought. "I carried him over the sea to
the garden where the temple stands. I hid behind the foam and
watched to see if anyone would come. I saw the pretty maid he
loves better than me." A sigh was the only sign of her deep
distress, for a mermaid cannot cry. "He says that the other maid
belongs to the holy temple. She will never come out into the
world, so they will never see each other again. It is I who will
care for him, love him, and give all my life to him."

Now rumors arose that the Prince was to wed the
beautiful daughter of a neighboring King, and that it was for
this reason he was having such a superb ship made ready to sail.
The rumor ran that the Prince's real interest in visiting the
neighboring kingdom was to see the King's daughter, and that he
was to travel with a lordly retinue. The little mermaid shook her
head and smiled, for she knew the Prince's thoughts far better
than anyone else did.

"I am forced to make this journey," he told her.
"I must visit the beautiful Princess, for this is my parents'
wish, but they would not have me bring her home as my bride
against my own will, and I can never love her. She does not
resemble the lovely maiden in the temple, as you do, and if I
were to choose a bride, I would sooner choose you, my dear mute
foundling with those telling eyes of yours." And he kissed her on
the mouth, fingered her long hair, and laid his head against her
heart so that she came to dream of mortal happiness and an
immortal soul.

"I trust you aren't afraid of the sea, my silent
child ' he said, as they went on board the magnificent vessel
that was to carry them to the land of the neighboring King. And
he told her stories of storms, of ships becalmed, of strange
deep-sea fish, and of the wonders that divers have seen. She
smiled at such stories, for no one knew about the bottom of the
sea as well as she did.

In the clear moonlight, when everyone except the
man at the helm was asleep, she sat on the side of the ship
gazing down through the transparent water, and fancied she could
catch glimpses of her father's palace. On the topmost tower stood
her old grandmother, wearing her silver crown and looking up at
the keel of the ship through the rushing waves. Then her sisters
rose to the surface, looked at her sadly, and wrung their white
hands. She smiled and waved, trying to let them know that all
went well and that she was happy. But along came the cabin boy,
and her sisters dived out of sight so quickly that the boy
supposed the flash of white he had seen was merely foam on the
sea.

Next morning the ship came in to the harbor of the
neighboring King's glorious city. All the church bells chimed,
and trumpets were sounded from all the high towers, while the
soldiers lined up with flying banners and glittering bayonets.
Every day had a new festivity, as one ball or levee followed
another, but the Princess was still to appear. They said she was
being brought up in some far-away sacred temple, where she was
learning every royal virtue. But she came at last.

The little mermaid was curious to see how
beautiful this Princess was, and she had to grant that a more
exquisite figure she had never seen. The Princess's skin was
clear and fair, and behind the long, dark lashes her deep blue
eyes were smiling and devoted.

"It was you!" the Prince cried. "You are the
one who saved me when I lay like a dead man beside the sea." He
clasped the blushing bride of his choice in his arms. "Oh, I am
happier than a man should be!" he told his little mermaid. "My
fondest dream - that which I never dared to hope - has come
true. You will share in my great joy, for you love me more than
anyone does."

The little mermaid kissed his hand and felt that
her heart was beginning to break. For the morning after his
wedding day would see her dead and turned to watery foam.

All the church bells rang out, and heralds rode
through the streets to announce the wedding. Upon every altar
sweet-scented oils were burned in costly silver lamps. The
priests swung their censers, the bride and the bridegroom joined
their hands, and the bishop blessed their marriage. The little
mermaid, clothed in silk and cloth of gold, held the bride's
train, but she was deaf to the wedding march and blind to the
holy ritual. Her thought turned on her last night upon earth, and
on all she had lost in this world.

That same evening, the bride and bridegroom went
aboard the ship. Cannon thundered and banners waved. On the deck
of the ship a royal pavilion of purple and gold was set up, and
furnished with luxurious cushions. Here the wedded couple were to
sleep on that calm, clear night. The sails swelled in the breeze,
and the ship glided so lightly that it scarcely seemed to move
over the quiet sea. All nightfall brightly colored lanterns were
lighted, and the mariners merrily danced on the deck. The little
mermaid could not forget that first time she rose from the depths
of the sea and looked on at such pomp and happiness. Light as a
swallow pursued by his enemies, she joined in the whirling dance.
Everyone cheered her, for never had she danced so wonderfully.
Her tender feet felt as if they were pierced by daggers, but she
did not feel it. Her heart suffered far greater pain. She knew
that this was the last evening that she ever would see him for
whom she had forsaken her home and family, for whom she had
sacrificed her lovely voice and suffered such constant torment,
while he knew nothing of all these things. It was the last night
that she would breathe the same air with him, or look upon deep
waters or the star fields of the blue sky. A never-ending night,
without thought and without dreams, awaited her who had no soul
and could not get one. The merrymaking lasted long after
midnight, yet she laughed and danced on despite the thought of
death she carried in her heart. The Prince kissed his beautiful
bride and she toyed with his coal-black hair. Hand in hand, they
went to rest in the magnificent pavilion.

A hush came over the ship. Only the helmsman
remained on deck as the little mermaid leaned her white arms on
the bulwarks and looked to the east to see the first red hint of
daybreak, for she knew that the first flash of the sun would
strike her dead. Then she saw her sisters rise up among the
waves. They were as pale as she, and there was no sign of their
lovely long hair that the breezes used to blow. It had all been
cut off.

'We have given our hair to the witch," they said,
"so that she would send you help, and save you from death
tonight. She gave us a knife. Here it is. See the sharp blade!
Before the sun rises, you must strike it into the Prince's heart,
and when his warm blood bathes your feet they will grow together
and become a fish tail. Then you will be a mermaid again, able to
come back to us in the sea, and live out your three hundred years
before you die and turn into dead salt sea foam. Make haste! He
or you must die before sunrise. Our old grandmother is so
grief-stricken that her white hair is falling fast, just as ours
did under the witch's scissors. Kill the Prince and come back to
us. Hurry! Hurry! See that red glow in the heavens! In a few
minutes the sun will rise and you must die." So saying, they gave
a strange deep sigh and sank beneath the waves.

The little mermaid parted the purple curtains of
the tent and saw the beautiful bride asleep with her head on the
Prince's breast. The mermaid bent down and kissed his shapely
forehead. She looked at the sky, fast reddening for the break of
day. She looked at the sharp knife and again turned her eyes
toward the Prince, who in his sleep murmured the name of his
bride. His thoughts were all for her, and the knife blade
trembled in the mermaid's hand. But then she flung it from her,
far out over the waves. Where it fell the waves were red, as if
bubbles of blood seethed in the water. With eyes already glazing
she looked once more at the Prince, hurled herself over the
bulwarks into the sea, and felt her body dissolve in foam.

The sun rose up from the waters. Its beams fell,
warm and kindly, upon the chill sea foam, and the little mermaid
did not feel the hand of death. In the bright sunlight
overhead,she saw hundreds of fair ethereal beings. They were so
transparent that through them she could see the ship's white
sails and the red clouds in the sky. Their voices were sheer
music, but so spirit-like that no human ear could detect the
sound, just as no eye on earth could see their forms. Without
wings, they floated as light as the air itself. The little
mermaid discovered that she was shaped like them, and that she
was gradually rising up out of the foam.

'Who are you, toward whom I rise?" she asked, and
her voice sounded like those above her, so spiritual that no
music on earth could match it.

"We are the daughters of the air," they answered.
"A mermaid has no immortal soul, and can never get one unless she
wins the love of a human being. Her eternal life must depend upon
a power outside herself. The daughters of the air do not have an
immortal soul either, but they can earn one by their good deeds.
We fly to the south, where the hot poisonous air kills human
beings unless we bring cool breezes. We carry the scent of
flowers through the air, bringing freshness and healing balm
wherever we go. When for three hundred years we have tried to do
all the good that we can, we are given an immortal soul and a
share in mankind's eternal bliss. You, poor little mermaid, have
tried with your whole heart to do this too. Your suffering and
your loyalty have raised you up into the realm of airy spirits,
and now in the course of three hundred years you may earn by your
good deeds a soul that will never die."

The little mermaid lifted her clear bright eyes
toward God's sun, and for the first time her eyes were wet with
tears.

On board the ship all was astir and lively again.
She saw the Prince and his fair bride in search of her. Then they
gazed sadly into the seething foam, as if they knew she had
hurled herself into the waves. Unseen by them, she kissed the
bride's forehead, smiled upon the Prince, and rose up with the
other daughters of the air to the rose-red clouds that sailed on
high.

"This is the way that we shall rise to the kingdom
of God, after three hundred years have passed."

"We may get there even sooner," one spirit
whispered. "Unseen, we fly into the homes of men, where there are
children, and for every day on which we find a good child who
pleases his parents and deserves their love, God shortens our
days of trial. The child does not know when we float through his
room, but when we smile at him in approval one year is taken from
our three hundred. But if we see a naughty, mischievous child we
must shed tears of sorrow, and each tear adds a day to the time
of our trial."